Different expressions of the same mode: a recent dialogue between archaeological and contemporary drawing practices

In this article we explore what we perceive as pertinent features of shared experience at the excavations of an Iron Age Hillfort at Bodfari, North Wales, referencing artist, archaeologist and examples of seminal art works and archaeological records resulting through inter-disciplinary collaboration. We explore ways along which archaeological and artistic practices of improvisation become entangled and productive through their different modes of mark-making. We contend that marks and memories of artist and archaeologist alike emerge interactively, through the mutually constituting effects of the object of study, the tools of exploration, and the practitioners themselves, when they are enmeshed in the cross-modally bound activities. These include, but are not limited to, remote sensing, surveying, mattocking, trowelling, drawing, photographing, videoing and sound recording. These marks represent the co-signatories: the gesture of the often anonymous practitioners, the voice of the deposits, as well as the imprint of the tools, and their interplay creates a multi-threaded narrative documenting their modes of intra-action, in short our practices. They occupy the conceptual space of paradata, and in the process of saturating the interstices of digital cognitive prosthetics they lend probity to their translations in both art form and archive

Archaeological Field Survey in the Environs of Aldborough (Isurium Brigantum)

During the period from 1989‒97 an extensive field-walking survey was undertaken in the vicinity of the Roman town at Aldborough, North Yorks (Fig.1). Sponsored by the YAS's Roman Antiquities Section (henceforth RAS), the survey's aims were twofold: first, to map and characterise as much as possible of the immediate extra-mural settlement around Roman Aldborough; and second to see the Roman settlement in its immediate landscape context, by extending surface collection over all arable land up to 2000m from the urban core. Within the limits of available arable land, the first of these aims was successfully accomplished. Changed circumstances prevented the second aim from being fully achieved, although a wide-ranging sample of arable areas was examined. Altogether, the survey subjected some 58.3ha to intensive collection